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Winter Weeding

In the midst of an early spring here in Greenville, I have taken on a large weeding task that I hope will cut down on the summer weeding chores. I’ve spent several hours, spaced out over a few days, and I’ve reached about the halfway point.

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It’s been about four years since we put in the west wing garden. At the time, Mr. Mims found a good deal on IWANNA for fifty monkey grass plants. He planted them along the edge of the garden to create a border. Not only does it look nice but it makes it harder for the grass and weeds in the open field to find their way into the garden.

Unfortunately there was a particularly annoying strain of crab grass mixed up with the monkey grass that he planted . The monkey grass has thrived and become a solid border, but so has the crab grass. It aggressively crawls through my garden all summer long and wraps itself around, under and over the landscaping timber. The only way to get control of the problem, I surmised, is to dig up the monkey grass and remove all the crabgrass roots.

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Honestly my teenage sons have been digging them up for me. Since I’ve had to break the big clumps of monkey grass apart to get the obnoxious crab grass roots out of them, I decided to space them out again and extend the border alongside the strawberry path. This way I feel like I’m getting something extra out of the muddy task. Muddy because I’ve been soaking the roots in buckets of water to make it easier to break apart.